‘Gentle Monster’ Trailer: Léa Seydoux’s Serene Family Life Is Ripped Apart By Shocking Crimes In Marie Kreutzer’s Film

At the start of the first teaser trailer for Gentle Monster, we see a montage of home video-style clips of a happy, loving family. That changes when a mother tells her daughter, “Darling, I feel that something is wrong.” In the next scene, the shirtless father/son-in-law answers the door and is told: “We have a warrant. We’d like to come in.”

The tone, and a family’s future, has changed.

Léa Seydoux stars in the Cannes-premiering Gentle Monster as Lucy, an experimental pianist who moves with her beloved but panic attack-liable husband Philip (Laurence Rupp) and young son to a rural farmhouse in Bavaria. Life seems swell until a special unit of big-city police led by Detective Kühn (Jella Haase) swoop in an seize Philip’s device. As expected, they find and seize thousand of images of child pornography — and his double life is exposed.

Catherine Deneuve plays Lucy’s mother in the feature from writer-director Marie Kreutzer.

As Deadline noted in our review of the film that played In Competition on the Croisette, in 2022, Austrian director Kreutzer released Corsage, starring Vicky Krieps as the 19th century Empress Elizabeth and Florian Teichtmeister as her philandering husband, Franz Joseph I. The following year, Teichtmeister was arrested and pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography: 76,000 files spread over 22 devices. He received a suspended sentence, which outraged many Austrians horrified by the crime committed by a prominent cultural figure. Inevitably, Kreutzer’s film was tarnished by association and even withdrawn from cinemas.

In Gentle Monster, Kreutzer seems to be sifting through the muck of the Teichtmeister affair, incorporating many of its details into a measured fictional account of a family torn apart by similar accusations.

Netflix acquired the film as Cannes was wrapping up in May and opens it October 30 in limited release before it starts streaming on November 18. It also will play at TIFF next month. Alexander Glehr and Johanna Scherz are the producers.